Tag Archives: Israel Richardson

By 8:30 a.m. on the morning of September 17, 1862, the left end of Robert E. Lee’s line on the Sharpsburg Heights crumpled under repeated Federal blows. The Confederates of Alexander Lawton’s and J.R. Jones’s divisions had been forced back … Continue reading →

The American artillery roared. Mortars thumped, arcing shells over the castle’s walls. As a heavy cloud of smoke formed around the muzzles of the cannon and mortars, Winfield Scott kept a close eye on the shelling’s effect. Scott’s target was … Continue reading →

George Patton famously said that “an army is a team.” Often, this statement is taken in terms of commanders and units working together, but there is another essential element that makes an army (or any headquarters) work: the command staff.

On September 17, 1862, outside the town of Sharpsburg, Maryland, and along the banks of Antietam Creek, Union and Confederate soldiers fought, bled, and died. That early autumn day is still the bloodiest single day—with 23,000 Americans as casualties—in American … Continue reading →